ya'll come listen to me now!!!

 Wow. Sometimes I just don't know what to expect when I wake up....the latest installment here by way of example: 

For so many years, my life was just one long string of endless suckage. Much of it self-inflicted.

But much of it just continuing fallout from some really false messages that were drummed into my skull as a child. I won't bore you with an endless diatribe about it. Let's just go with the generalization that most of my life history has not prompted me to be a living endorsement for "Life is Good".  I've been wading through a lot of that psychic caca and clearing it out.   Amazing what is free to come in when you take that step. And I always thought it probably only worked in the pages of overly optimistic self-help books....

So anyway, stuff keeps happening. Let's take this past week. Once upon a very long time ago,  I had a nice cushy little volunteer spot at a college radio station. I loved it. I really did. I might just even have to say that in Liz's big wide world of work hall-of-fame, that it was one of the highlights. Even if I wasn't paid a dime, being as it was supposed to be an educational opportunity.  I'm not even saying this to get suck-up points because the former general manager might be reading this (or might not; I really don't know. He's a busy boy lately).  Anyhow, the point here being that this was one of those times that one looks back on and realizes how everything fits just right and all. I've had a few of those in my lifetime. How about you?

I started my life-long love affair with radio in high school. I knew a gal whose brother-in-law worked as the music director at a station in the town in Missouri where we grew up.  Us being the rock 'n roll crazed teenagers that we were, and Terry being the nice guy that he was, we were allowed to spend a fair amount of time making ourselves useful in menial ways and generally just hanging out. A good time had by all. 

I even took radio/tv announcing to fulfill the high school speech requirement (yes, my high school really did have this as an option). I was that smartass who thought it would be incredibly clever to name my faux station something nasty spelled backwards. Given that radio call names are usually four letters long and being that they begin with the letter "K" on the side of the Mississippi that I grew up on, I'll let you be the one to figure that one out...suffice to say it was pointed out to me that there's one in every class and that year I was that one. Shucks. And I thought I was so original. 

 I knew I was drawn to this like a moth to a flame. My mother, however, was nowhere near as enthused. I don't want to go down the long road of discombobulating family of origin issues here. Suffice to say that my budding interest was strongly discouraged, and I was, instead encouraged, to um, pursue more scholarly paths. So I tried. Really, I did. But somehow my attempt at the academic life culminated with most of it spent STILL hanging out at radio stations (and working, actually working. Let's not forget that part. Don't want to sound like too much of a slacker). 

Maybe it was genetic. I have a long-deceased grandmother who apparently used to sing on the air way back when such live broadcast performances were common (alas, I did not get her singing voice. Don't ask). Her son, that would have been my father, was in the music promotion biz for many years: he owned a record store until the big box boys beat him down. Live in store promos and all that. Of course I was a baby and don't remember any of this, but still...

I have a distant relative that manages a particular well-known rapper from St. Louis. I've heard this through the family grapevine.  So, despite my mother's protestations, its all right there in the gene pool. The unchlorinated one, anyway. 

I fully intended to continue this great radio career out in the real world. After I spent my post-graduation summer driving around the country with another gal as young and stupid as myself, that is. A turn of events beyond the bizarre stood between me and my big ideas, however. Being as I was totally and completely lacking in self-confidence back then, my response was to tuck my tail between my legs and take my job application right on over to the nearest McDonalds.  (really. I kid you not. They needed warm bodies. I needed positive cash flow. A match made in heaven....NOT)

That very short lived stint at the venerable Mickey Ds led to ten more years of gainful food service employment. No doubt I am far from the only person in recent history to find themselves hustling trays instead of whatever constituted Plan A. It was a good time. Good money. Real good money. With the very heavy plus that I DID get reams of material just waiting to find a home on the page. Because everyone knows that there are very few things funnier than on-the-job tales of pissed off waitri. (my own made-up term for food servers of both genders in the plural..sigh....yes, I know it's cheesy. Works for me.)

Just around the same time that my years of throwing food at dissatisfied conventioneers was winding down and losing some serious appeal, I got married. I got pregnant. Twice.  We all know how THAT one goes. Kept me fer sure busy for the next sixteen years, that's what.  

Which brings me right on up to the present issue of finding productive ways to spend my time these days now that kiddo number one is almost an adult and kiddo number two spends a lot of time immersed in his own goings-on. 

Those who have followed me here since my early blogging days know that one day I got this wild hair that I might like to be an attorney.  Way too much Court TV.  Another family legacy: an active social conscience.  Lawyering seemed like a very good way to assist in the betterment of society. At least at that point in time.. Long story short: I didn't get in.  I was rejected not just once, but twice, even.  I gave it my very best shot. I have blogged before about the serendipity of my lack of lawyerliness in the big scheme of things.  For the sake of staying on track (not to mention my desire to not repeat myself) you can read all about it in the aforementioned linked post. 

I started blogging as a way to fill my time. Blogging leads to media which leads to all kinds of interesting conclusions, at least in my caffeine addled brain...I found myself posting a fair amount of music blurbs. I was introduced to blip.fm, a nifty little Web 2.0 app, that among other things, allows you to post entire songs via your twitter stream. Fun. I dished a little bit about the long ago music biz chapter of my life and that was that. The nostalgia of misspent youth. That sort of thing. 

Then, like the rest of the online world, I discovered crackbook  facebook. Among the peeps from my past that I reconnected with there was the aforementioned former general manager from college radio of long ago. We spent a fair amount of time chit chatting via facebook's very addictive little chat feature.  You know, once you open a door like that, you just can't go and stuff everything right back on in it: I started wondering why exactly I stopped pursuing something I loved because of what was probably a very minor setback. I realized I was doing a pretty good job over here with my supposedly non-professional writing. The way I was intuitively stringing together little news snippets with songs and such in between my longer pieces had, um, a very radio like quality to it....

Out of the blue, a couple of radio biz types that I didn't even know started following me on twitter. Maybe it was my incessant blipping of quality music??? I really don't know...

So then a coupla days ago, teenage daughter ever so casually mentions to me that River 99.9 over in Spokane has a guest listener DJ gig every Saturday night. Kid has NO idea what she unleashed. None at all. I filled out the online application to guest host, sent it in and fully expected to get back some form letter type thingie thanking me for taking the time to fill it out and that I would be put on a list or something like that and maybe they would get back to me in a few months. Well. I got a very prompt email back approximately seven hours later. Talk about moving fast...

I will be on THIS Saturday night...that will be March 21, 2009;  from nine pm to eleven pm PST.  For those outside the general Spokane area, the station has streaming audio online. Don't forget to adjust for the time difference if you're out of the Pacific zone. I went in and recorded some promos for the show and it was so much fun to be back behind the mike again after, oh, a small 27 year (!) break.  I don't even know that I remember enjoying the on air part anywhere near as much back in the day. I think a clear head will do that for ya.  Whaddya think??

 I would be completely lying, though, if I didn't say that I am hoping somehow, someway I  might find my way back to a part time pro gig, though. Not even so much for the money; anybody in the business will tell you that nobody goes into radio to get rich. Nah...I just wanna do it because I freakin' love it. I mean surrounded by great music all the time and getting paid to share my special brand of lunacy live...just tell me what's not to love??? It's not for everybody. Obviously. 

So wish me luck and for gosh sakes: LISTEN TO ME THIS SATURDAY!!! That's Spokane's River, 99.9  from nine to twelve pm PST.  March 21.  I am just soooo not above some seriously shameless self-promotion in here!!!

Oh, and THANKS!!!! I truly mean that from the bottom of my heart.  Because nobody in any sort of media would be there without readers or listeners or whatever all else to consume their product.